Assignment Number:
Introduction
Throughout World War II, the Nazis carried out some of the most unthinkable and horrific experiments upon human beings, often citing science as a valid reason for their actions. As accounts of these experiments began to leak out prior to and throughout the Nuremberg Trials, they had a profound effect upon people’s comprehension of man’s insatiable curiosity and his inclination towards evil. Since there is hardly any precedent or ensuing studies conducted to support the results from these experiments, it has long been conjectured as to whether their findings should be admissible in modern publications or applications. This term paper discusses those medical experiments performed in the name of research. Specifically, it discusses the purpose(s) of the experiments, naming some of the most notorious perpetrators of them, the medical and scientific outcomes of them, and if they affect modern day science. The paper also considers the matter of the ethical validity of using medical data obtained from them.
Background and Overview
Extracted from the archives of the Jewish Virtual Library, which is an extensive source of information about Jewish history and related matters, under the auspices of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE) established in 1993, an article entitled “Nazi Medical Experiments: Background & Overview” (n.d.), provides a great deal of information on concentration camp experiments, as paraphrased and summarized in the following paragraphs.
Racial Experimentation
Following the passing in Germany of The Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases in 1933, over 200,000 Germans were sterilized and German physicians experimented with sterilization as a means of eradicating “unworthy” elements within what they saw as the master race, as well as providing the means to prevent populations of occupied territories reproducing and perhaps thereby threatening their masters in the future.
The two methods of sterilization used in the experiments on Jewish prisoners were by radiation with X-rays and by injection. (Figure 1 shows locations of the major camps).
Figure 1: Map Showing Some of the German Concentration and Death Camps
Source: BBC (n.d.). http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/tch_wjec/germany19291947/3waryears3.shtml.
In the Auschwitz concentration camp, Dr Horst Schumann sterilized groups of 30 or so male and female prisoners by radiating their testicles / ovaries as applicable, using varying doses of X-rays. Although those “treatments” caused swelling and/or serious burns, the prisoners were made to resume work. Although it was found that this method of sterilization was disappointing, and inferior to the more reliable surgical castration, Schumann continued with the experiments.
The most notorious Auschwitz experiments were performed by the infamous Dr Josef Mengele, and were conducted to prove “the superiority of the Nordic race.” He performed experiments that were painful, traumatic and exhausting on gypsy children, twins, and others (mostly children) with abnormalities. Typical procedures included casting their jaws and their teeth in plaster and taking their hands and feet prints. A prisoner artist drew the shapes of their heads and other body parts for comparison purposes. In some cases, when the “research” process was completed they were killed by injection and their organs examined to provide further data. Those specimens considered anatomically to be of special scientific interest were then shipped to Berlin to be the subjects of further research. Mengele fled to South America in January 1945, taking with him the experimental documentation, imagining it to be of great value scientifically.
War-Injury Experiments
A series of experiments related to war injuries performed on prisoners at Dachau were designed to determine how members of the German military might survive various conditions encountered in combat situations. Conducted by civilian doctors Siegfried Rugg and Hans Romberg, they included experiments to ascertain the effects of low air pressure, simulating breathing without added oxygen at high altitudes. Prisoners placed in pressure chambers suffered, and some died. There were freezing experiments to investigate the effects of and possible treatments for hypothermia, in which prisoners were placed in iced water or snow for extended periods then warmed up by various methods, all without the benefit of painkillers. There were also experiments involved forced drinking of seawater.
Pharmaceutical Testing
At various Nazi concentration camps, some 7,000 prisoners were the subjects of experiments by circa 200 physicians (with links to German medical research companies, institutions and universities), who were given freedom to work without consideration for the health of the subjects and without any concern for the basics of medical ethical standards. They tested compounds to fight various contagious diseases, amputated or broke prisoner’ legs, attempted transplant surgery, and gassed prisoners to test possible antidotes.
Influences on Modern Medical Science
Wells (2012) reports that following what he describes as testing of “dangerous pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines” carried out at Auschwitz, which involved inhumane procedures practiced on prisoners, many of those same physicians and scientists joined medical and pharmaceutical firms – the same companies that today manufacture the vaccines that we use widely.
Gomes (2010) in her paper “Nazi Experiments” states that “much of the data discovered could be used in modern medicine to save many lives today” although she concedes that there are genuine ethical concerns in that regard.
The above are just two examples of papers that recognize that deplorable though those Nazi experiments may have been, the results and findings of that reasearch no doubt produced data that could still be valuable today, if used by modern medical researchers. The crucial question though is whether it would be considered ethical and morally responsible to use that data, knowing how it was obtained and the lives lost in the process.
Ethical Issues
As related by Cohen, in “The Ethics of Using Medical Data from Nazi Experiments”, the facts revealed during the Nuremberg Trials highlighted evidence of sadistical experiments performed by German doctors in the wartime concentration camps in the name of “science.”
Arising from those revelations, and in the years since, there have been instances in otherwise reputable medical literature where those experiments have been referenced, which has understandably caused controversy, relating to the use of such data, bearing in mind how it was obtained. That leads us to the question as to whether it is ethically acceptable to use that morally repugnant data that was obtained forcibly from prisoners in the concentration camps.
Cohen’s paper addresses these ethical issues – not just the question of using data obtained by torturing and murdering prisoners, but also the degree of validity of those experiments and the level of medical competence of those performing them. He also considers aspects such as the social acceptability of using that data, some guidelines as to when it might be acceptable to use it, and the ethical considerations from the perspective of the victims themselves.
As an interjection to the main theme of his paper, Cohen draws our attention to the sterile nature of using the word “data” in this context, stating that it masks the true horror of the experiments and the suffering of the unwilling but helpless subjects.
Cohen reminds us of three fundamental and awful features of those brutal experiments: 1) the prisoners were all forced to participate; 2) most had to endure pain, suffering and even mutilation; 3) some experiments were intentionally designed to end in the prisoner’s death.
In terms of specific accounts of the experiments themselves, Cohen describes the freezing experiments carried out by Dr Sigmund Rascher. Of the 300 or so prisoners who became the unfortunate subjects, between 80 and 90 of them died. Perhaps particularly shocking is that Rascher requested relocation from Dachau to Auschwitz, where the larger facilities would mean that he would have his concentration disturbed less by the screams of his hypothermia victims when their extremities froze. In his high altitude experiments, Rascher was known to dissect the brains of victims while they were still living to check for air bubbles in their blood vessels. Of the 200 prisoners who endured those tests, 80 died and the rest were executed.
Dr Hans Eppinger conducted the experiments with drinking seawater – either unaltered or given a disguised taste; for the experimental subjects it was their only liquid intake made available to them. The gypsy victims became so dehydrated that they licked the floors after mopping them just to get some unsalted water. Eppinger committed suicide a month before he was scheduled to appear at the Nuremberg Trials.
Sulfanilamide experiments involved inflicting wounds on otherwise healthy Jewish prisoners, then infecting the wounds with bacteria to find out if sulfanilamide would clear the infection. Similar experiments were conducted by a Dr Heissmeyer, seeking to confirm that TB (tuberculosis) was only infectious to inferior organisms such as Jews. Around 200 of his adult experimental subjects died and – as the Allied Army approached – Heissmeyer hanged 20 children, trying to hide his experiments. According to Cohen there were also miscellaneous experiments – those with no pretense of scientific validity. They included poison experiments performed simply to see how quickly the subjects would die, and experiments in which limbs were amputated from living prisoners to check the rate the blood flowed, as a part of experiments to develop a blood coagulant, or as part of crude attempts at limb transplanting procedures.
Under the category of what Cohen refers to as experiments with racial motivation, there were those involving artificial insemination. Dr Carl Clauberg established Block 10 in Auschwitz populated with married women aged between 20 and 40. In total 300 women were inseminated. However, Himmler instructed Clauberg to experiment with ways to reverse the inseminations. That was done by injecting caustic solutions into either their cervix or womb, which caused intense pain, inflammation of the ovaries, stomach spasms and hemorrhages.
As regards the essence of the ethical dilemmas faced by today’s medical profession, Cohen refers to Dr Robert Pozos of Minnesota University, who states that rewarming techniques for hypothermia victims are largely a matter of trial and error, but data existing in this area was compiled by Dr Rascher at Dachau. Pozos managed to obtain that useful data, which had for a long time been suppressed. He planned to publish the findings in the New England Journal of Medicine, but the journal’s then editor Arnold Relman refused point blank to publish it.
According to an editorial article by Angell in that journal in May 1990, “using information from the death camps might be seen as sanctioning the use of results.”
According to Cohen, another person facing a similar ethical dilemma to Pozos was Dr J. Hayward who is a professor of biology in Vancouver, Canada. He actually used Rascher’s data to progress his hypothermia research and justified that use by stating that whilst he had been reluctant to do so, there simply is no other existing equivalent data, and that using it could help save lives in the future.
Cohen cites yet another ethical dilemma relating to the use (or not) of Nazi data. This time it was the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), who wanted to understand more about the toxic effects of the gas phosgene. They wanted to use the experimental data obtained by the Nazi Dr Bickenbach when French prisoners were exposed to the gas. The reason for wanting to use that data was that the only other data the EPA had was from testing the gas in animal research. Eventually it was decided the data should not be used, following a letter of protest signed by 22 of the scientists at the EPA. Cohen disagrees with that decision, suggesting (as did Dr Hayward) that using the Nazi data could have helped save lives in the future.
Conclusion
It is evident from the research undertaken and the information thereby obtained that many of today’s medical professionals are – with good reason – uncomfortable about any modern use of the data obtained by the Nazis in the execution of those horrific experiments, which were part of the Nazi regime’s objective of exterminating the Jews in Europe, and seemed to have been sanctioned by the German medical establishment at the time. As Cohen pointed out in his paper though, there are perhaps circumstances where using some of that data for the benefit of people living today might save future lives, which makes the ethical dilemmas even more of a conundrum, but any decision to use the data probably no more palatable.
Bibliography
AICE Homepage and Mission Statement, etc (n.d.). http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/about/index.shtml
Angell, Marcia, M.D. (May 1990). “The Nazi Hypothermia Experiments and Unethical Research Today.” The New England Medical Journal, 1990; 322:1462-1464, May 17, 1990, DOI: 10.1056/NEJM199005173222011. http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199005173222011
Cohen, Baruch, C. (1990). “The Ethics of Using Medical Data from Nazi Experiments.” Jewish Law. http://www.jlaw.com/Articles/NaziMedEx.html
Figure 1: “Map Showing Some of the German Concentration and Death Camps.” BBC (n.d.). http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/tch_wjec/germany19291947/3waryears3.shtml
Gomes, Tabitha. (2010). “Nazi Experiments.” University of Hawaii, HOHONU Volume 8 2010 – 13-16. http://hilo.hawaii.edu/academics/hohonu/documents/Vol08x03NaziExperiments.pdf
Jewish Virtual Library Homepage (n.d.). http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/indexold.html
“Nazi Medical Experiments: Background & Overview” (n.d.). Jewish Virtual Library. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/nazi_experiments.html
Wells, S, D. (Jun. 2012). “Modern-day vaccines have their roots in Nazi medical experiments.” Natural News. http://www.naturalnews.com/036062_vaccines_Nazi_medical_experiments.html
